The sky around NGC 1679 at true scale, north up and east left, with stars to magnitude 8. The circles show the field of a low-power eyepiece and of 10×50 binoculars.
NGC 1679 is a barred spiral galaxy (SBm) in Caelum, 31 million light-years away
NGC 1679 (ESO 422-001, PGC 16120) is a barred spiral galaxy (SBm) in the constellation Caelum, 31 million light-years away. It shines at magnitude 11.6 and spans 2.7′ × 2′ of sky, about 24,000 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in January.
Galaxy: a system of billions of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity, far outside the Milky Way. Spiral galaxies have a disk with arms; elliptical galaxies are smooth, round or oval swarms of older stars.
NGC 1679 is AM 448-320 in the Arp-Madore catalog
Halton Arp and Barry Madore listed it in A Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations (1987), from their search of the UK Schmidt southern sky survey plates. The number 448-320 is its position: right ascension 4h 48m and declination -32.0°.
Finding NGC 1679 from υ4 Eri
NGC 1679 lies 7.0° east of υ4 Eri, the magnitude 3.5 star. Three fingers held at arm's length cover about 5°.
NGC 1679 is highest in the evening in January
The chart gives its height above the horizon at 9 pm through the year, from 60°N to 40°S. It can be seen from the whole southern hemisphere and north to about 58°N, and never sets south of 58°S.
NGC 1679 is 31 million light-years away
The light seen from NGC 1679 tonight left it about 31 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. It ranks 72 of 422 by distance among the galaxies on Go Astronomy. Distance source: Cosmicflows-4 (Tully et al. 2023), Tully-Fisher.
Objects within 6° of NGC 1679
No other Messier, Caldwell or Herschel 400 object lies within 6°.
